Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has a lovely day filled with family, friends and lots of joy! :)
Sharing with Macro Monday and Christmas Cheer #1 with Madge.

Macro Monday - 11/05/2012

There were two of these moths hanging out on the screen this morning. I thought they were pretty funky looking with their "bald" heads! :)

Linking up with Macro Monday.

Sunday Photo - Red Bird of Paradise

Also known as Caesalpinia pulcherrima. All of these shots are SOOC, the colors really are this vibrant! All I did was add the watermark and a little frame. :)

Linking up with Orange You Glad It's Friday, Flower Art Friday, Floral Friday Fotos, Weekly Top Shot, Your Sunday Best, Straight Out Of the Camera Sunday, Mandarin Orange Monday and Macro Monday. Check out all of these fun memes for some awesome photography!

Shades of Yellow

This is a busy, busy time of year for many of us, what with gardens needing care and produce needing preserved. Isn't it wonderful?!? :)
I wanted to take the time to share some of the beautiful desert wildflowers in our area, all in shades of yellow this time.
Linking up with Tones On Tuesday, Mosaic Monday and Macro Monday.

Made ME Jump!

I was working away, pulling grass in the garden, when something moved practically under my hand! No, I didn't scream like a girl but I sure jumped and I think the tarantula was just as surprised as I was. :)
He/she wasn't in any big hurry so I ran inside and grabbed my camera. Jerry kept saying, "You know they jump, don't you? It's gonna jump on your head!" He thought he was real funny. :-/
The rains always bring out the tarantulas so I knew to be on the lookout, just not right under my hand. LOL!!
Linking up with Tones On Tuesday, Mosaic Monday and Macro Monday.

Garden Update - July 16, 2012

My garden seems to be slow to get going this year. Everything is doing well but I seem to be about a month behind where I was this time last year. I really hope I get a good harvest from my little garden and have enough tomatoes and green beans to freeze and can some for the winter. Now that our summer rains have started, it should really take off! :)
Linking up with The Country Garden Showcase, Mosaic Monday and Macro Monday.

Garden Update - 06/18/2012

The only exciting thing happening around here garden-wise is the Echinacea has started blooming! :)
In the vegetable garden, everything is doing okay. The tomatoes have started blooming, the pepper plants are doing well, the bush beans are growing, the strawberries are blooming again, the pumpkin plants are growing nicely, my last surviving eggplant plant is making a recovery from being munched on, and I FINALLY got some summer squash seeds to germinate without the birds digging them up first!
Linking up with Mosaic Monday, Macro Monday and The Country Garden Showcase this week.

Leafcutter Bees

When I was watering the garden yesterday, I noticed that some of the leaves on the snow pea plants had half-moon-shaped pieces out of them.

I knew right off that the Leafcutter bees were building their nests! I worked in the nursery at our local Ace Hardware for a couple of years and every year about this time, new people to our area would start bringing in plants with similar looking leaves. They always wanted to know what was causing this and when we would tell them, they wanted to know what they could do to kill the bees or make them stop. We would tell them that the bees were just building their nests and they would quit "cutting" the leaves in a week or two.

They usually cut my roses or the fruit trees, this is the first year I've seen them on the snow peas. It doesn't hurt the plant and heaven knows, we need all the bees we can get!

They got both sides of this leaf! It was fun to be able to grab my camera and take pictures of them hard at work! :)

In this picture, you can see the cut leaf just above the bee and the piece is grasped in it's legs as it prepares to take it off to the nest! You can read an article about them here.

Linking up with Heidi for The Country Garden Showcase and Lisa for Macro Monday.

Sunday Photo - Violas

I love Violas! They are the flowers that modern Pansies were derived from. The blooms are much smaller, measuring about 3/4-inch, and the plants are only 2 to 3 inches tall. Yep, I laid on my stomach in the yard to take these pictures! ;-)

Violas are also called Johnny Jump Ups and Heartsease. This purple, yellow and white combination is the most common but I have also seen them in shades of orange, yellow and white.

I haven't actually planted any Violas in several years but I always have a few volunteers show up in the yard because they self seed so easily. To encourage a longer blooming season, pinch off the dead flowers.

Linking up with Madge for Weekly Top Shot, Jan for Straight Out Of the Camera Sunday, Nancy for Your Sunday Best and Lisa for Macro Monday.

Garden Update

The little tomato plants are growing nicely in my south-facing window...

...so are the peppers and eggplant.

The snow peas are growing well in the garden, they are finally big enough that I don't have to keep them covered to prevent the birds from eating them! :) The turnips, rutabagas, spinach, lettuce and onions are all doing well too...they are still covered but it was too cold this morning to uncover them for pictures! LOL!!

I need to get some more radishes planted this week, I have harvested almost all of the current crop. Speaking of radishes, what do you all DO with all the radishes you grow?!? There are only so many salads we can eat!
I tried a new recipe for braised radishes last week and it was really, really good! :) Just halve or quarter your radishes depending on their size and then cook them in a saucepan with a little chicken stock, butter and salt and pepper until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Cooking them takes away most of that radishy bite. I will definitely be making this again, I ate the leftovers for breakfast the next morning!! LOL!! I also tried a radish sandwich for the first time the other day, thinly sliced radishes on a nice crusty bread with lots of butter and salt. YUM!!

Linking up with The Country Garden Showcase and Macro Monday. 

Popcorn - My New Favorite Brand

I love popcorn, it is one of my favorite snacks, and my new favorite "brand" of popcorn comes from Teresa at Eden Hills!! :) Teresa lives in Iowa and grows this yummy popcorn on her farm. Her mom helps her husk, clean and bag it for sale. You can read a fun post she did about it last fall here.

Just look at all this lovely, freshly popped popcorn...mmmm, can't you just smell it?!? Now for some really good news, you too can buy Teresa's popcorn and enjoy it at your house! It's always good to know where your food comes from but how often can you find homegrown popcorn! Teresa has an online store where she sells the popcorn (very reasonably) along with handmade soaps, lip balms, cards, calendars and other goodies! You can find her store here. And if you have never visited Teresa's blog, I highly recommend stopping by to see her goats (and kids!), peacocks, ducks and all the other critters that call Eden Hills home!

These were all the kernels that didn't pop when I made up a batch of Teresa's popcorn over the weekend, pretty good, huh?!?

Disclaimer: I receive nothing for doing this endorsement other than the pleasure of telling my blogging friends about Teresa's wonderful popcorn! :) Linking up with Lisa's Chaos for Macro Monday.

Seeds Sprouting, Blackberry Bushes and Harvesting

Plants have sprouted in all the tomato cells! YAY!! The eggplant are just coming up and some of the peppers are starting to sprout. Some of these seeds are three years old so I wasn't too sure what kind of success I was going to have.

I also put out some onion sets last week and they are doing great!

I have been wanting to plant blackberries for awhile now. I'm not sure this variety is really going to do well here in our growing zone so I only bought two plants.

And, finally, I have been harvesting a few radishes here and there! Radishes are such a gratifying crop to grow, only 30 days to harvest! ;-)

I still have everything in the garden, except the onions, covered with lightweight frost cloth to keep the birds from eating it all. It's pretty cool because the sun shines through, I can water right through the cloth and it will help to keep the bugs out! Linking up to Macro Monday at Lisa's Chaos.